Study: China’s Pessimistic Little Emperors Pose Economic Risk

An elderly couple feed their great-grandson with a piece of cake as they sit under the sun in winter in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, January 9, 2013. China’s one-child policy has produced less trusting, less trustworthy and less competitive children compared to the generation born before the policy was introduced, a study has found.

China’s effort to control the country’s booming population in 1979 gave birth to one of the world’s largest social experiment, enabling scientists to ask: What are the effects of being an only child?
More than three decades later, the results are in.

China’s only children tend to be more pessimistic, more self-centered and more risk averse, traits that are likely to affect the country’s labor market and have economic implications, according to a study conducted by a team of four researchers from Australian universities.

The report, published on Thursday by the journal Science, said that of those in the study who were born after the one-child rule went into effect, 23% were less likely to take on occupations that entail business risk, such as entrepreneurialism and investment, compared to those children born before the policy was implemented. China’s only children also tend to be less competitive and less conscientious, said the study, conducted on a general population of residents of Beijing, where the policy has been strictly enforced.

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Results of the study add to existing evidence that China’s adherence to its population control policy may be risking the stability of its future economy.

A 2010 national census conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that the country’s labor pool, its economic growth engine, is dwindling. Those under the age of 14 make up 16.6% of the population, down from 23% a decade earlier. The country’s population growth rate from 2000 to 2010 was 5.84%, compared to 11.66% over the previous decade.

Chinese demographers have seized on the numbers to argue that the government should abandon its one-child policy.

When the one-child policy was officially implemented in 1980, officials said it was designed to boost prosperity of the people. They also said it would last for 30 years, but the 30th anniversary of its full implementation passed in 2010 with no word of when it would be phased out.

Exceptions to the policy exist. Rural families whose first child is a girl may have a second child, as can wedded couples who are both themselves only children. Wealthy families can also afford to pay a fine for an extra child. Minority groups are also exempt.

The policy has long bred fears that China is raising a population doted on by parents and grandparents and unaccustomed to the arguing and pummeling that comes with brothers and sisters, leading to the phrase little emperors. “There’s been concern that the policy would cause less-than-ideal problems for society,” said Lisa Cameron, one of the study’s authors and head of Monash University’s Centre for Development Economics in Melbourne.

The study suggested a potential economic impact as well. Results showed only children were more often told to be thrifty, Ms. Cameron said, adding that the study didn’t look at the effects of the one-child policy on consumption, which the government is aiming to build in its efforts to rebalance the economy.

Sibling-free children were less likely to have received parental instruction on social values, Ms. Cameron said, noting that they were less likely to have been told to trust others, to avoid selfishness and to be imaginative. It also suggested China’s sibling-free children are significantly less trusting and less altruistic than counterparts with siblings.

Contact with cousins and other children had little effect on only children’s traits, said Ms. Cameron.

When asked if risk aversion might be related to rearing by parents who had experienced the Cultural Revolution in 1966 to 1976, Ms. Cameron said both the only children and the children with siblings were raised by parents who grew up in that turbulent era.

The study notes that the policy’s effect on people born long after its introduction may differ from its effect on those born at the time of implementation. “Under such circumstances, we would expect that the policy’s effect would be, if anything, magnified,” the study said.

The study was conducted with 421 males and females born prior to the policy in 1975 and 1978 and post-policy implementation in 1980 and 1983. Participants were tested with economic games, measuring their appetite for risk, attitudes toward competition, extent of altruism and ability to trust.

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